Friday, December 4, 2009

Oh god. Here's the deal. This is Spinal Tap is a very funny movie. You should all watch it, though I imagine most of you have. This comic, on the other hand, is not funny. And quite frankly it pisses me off when xkcd tries to take a comedy movie and make jokes about it. He did it with Ghostbusters, he did it with the Princess Bride, now he is doing it with Spinal Tap (that list, incidentally, is not exhaustive). The point is, the source material is funny, in this case really funny, and so if you are going to attach yourself to it you had better be damn sure you are making a really fucking great joke. Which, of course, you are not.

The thing that makes this comic especially dumb is that not only is Spinal Tap a comedy, it's a mockumentary! The members of Spinal Tap are supposed to be really dumb. So the punchline is...ha ha, they are so dumb! How dumb are they? They are so dumb, you could take advantage of them! ha ha!

Here, let's watch the original together:

ahhh, so good.

As you can see, the first two panels of the comic are essentially distilled versions of the dialog in the original. And the second two are Randall putting his smart-alec self in the scene in place of Rob Reiner. Being like "oooh, I totally could have said something funnier there! If you are an engineer you will think it is funny!" But no one gives a fuck because a) your version is not funnier at all, b) even if it is, which it is not, the reason they are famous and you are not is that they didn't just make up one joke, they made the whole fucking movie and they made it brilliantly. Who cares what you think of that. Even Mystery Science Theater, which is of course based entirely on other works, makes hundreds of jokes per movie. Yours on its own is just...petty.

And it's not like people haven't made "this amp goes to eleven" jokes before. Guitar Hero (or Rock Band? i forget) had "this amp goes to eleven" stickers for their plastic guitars. Hell, Wikipedia has a whole damn page dedicated to this joke. So your dumb little contribution to the canon makes a huge difference.

This commenter got to the heart of it well, I think, but this commenter just makes me vomit. Why the hell are you giving Randall credit for putting an umlat on the band's name? It's in their fucking name! That's just being correct! Woo hoo! he didn't spell it wrong! good job! here's a lolipop!

god, can i go home now? is there anything else to say about this shit?

in unrelated news, I coulda sworn that xkcd did a joke involving "When Harry Met Sally" at some relatively recent point. Am I totally wrong? Or is Randy actually making jokes about all the funny Rob Reiner movies? (If so, I can't wait for him to run out and have to make a joke about North.)

And re the second commenter, he did put the wrong mark over the o in Erdos' name (I'm not putting any mark over it because I'm typing it, this isn't a mathematical paper, and I'm fucking lazy), so MAYBE HE SHOULD BE CONGRATULATED.

It's all about "Me, Randall, scientist of the scientists, teacher of the teachers, am better than the guy in the Spinal Tap movie".

No you're not. What's funny in this explanation of scales and stuff ? Are you explaining the joke ? THanks Randall, but we got it already.

The second joke is funnier indeed. But it's badly made. Furthermore, you don't need to be an engineer to come up with the idea of selling them an amp that goes up to 12.

Randall should stop considering his big family of scientist-nerds to be, if not the most, at least the only intelligent group of people in the world. Dig this, Munroe : okay, your life is so empty that you can't define yourself through anything else but "I AM A SCIENTIST", but you really don't have to bear the flag all the time.

Personnaly, I am a historian, and so what ? I'm not constantly bitching with it. I'm not going all pedantic about history and making jokes that only historians could understand, in purpose, to isolate the others. I have never been all "HISTORIANS RULES AND IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THEN YOU ARE A STUPID SCIENTIST LOL".

This Randall is what you sound like. It's okay to make science-oriented jokes since it was your idea at first, but no need to be constantly bitching with it.

That's childish, once again. The last time I've seen people fighting to know wether humanities or sciences were the best, it was in secondary school...

True scientists are not like this. They don't think that only an engineer could laugh at Spinal Tap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Up_to_eleven&action=history shows that Wikipedia is finally sick of the sycophants vomiting up "in popular culture" references to xkcd on any page tangentially related.

If there was an easily recognizable way of transcribing Peter from Family Guy's little "nyeheheheheheh" laugh, that'd be the perfect alt-text for this comic, because that's exactly what this feels like: an idiot manchild laughing at something inane.

RanDULL, you really need to come up with your own jokes instead of raping and trampling on other, much better jokes. It is not funny. Make some original material for once! Then, we may actually start liking your jokes. We may even laugh. Or say nice things. :)

Concerning 670, I actually kinda liked it when I first read it. But then, I've never seen spinal tap before (thanks for the clip Carl btw). Now that I see it was another reference, the comic is nothing but a mere half shadow of the original joke. That itself leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Another reason why Randy sucks and This is Spinal Tap rules is that most of the movie was improved. The actors were genuinely hilarious people who made one of the funniest movies of all time while they were filming it. Randal's had over 20 years to write a joke based on improved dialog and doesn't come close to the original humor.

Person #1, I beg to differ. The umlaut is a diacritic mark that indicates a particular changed pronunciation (this change also called umlaut) in several languages. Moreover, the term 'heavy metal umlaut' has been coined to describe the way in which many heavy metal bands have used the mark in a purely decorative manner -- a practice that Spinal Tap was parodying.

Um, you're missing the point. The strip isn't about Spinal Tap, it's about engineers and how they don't know what people want. Given almost any task, a normal engineer is likely to go into needless detail that laymen just aren't interested in. A smart engineer is one that doesn't really think like an engineer at all, gives people what they want and take the money.

daniel^2 is right. In the English language, umlaut refers to the markings of two dots placed over a vowel to signify a vowel-sound change, or to the change itself. While *in* Germanic languages it might mean the specific letters with the marking, we're not speaking those languages, so we take the English definition. Yes, this is another example of English raping other languages in a back alley and rummaging around their pockets for loose grammar afterwards, but that's how we roll.

Um, you're missing the point. The strip isn't about Spinal Tap, it's about engineers and how they don't know what people want. Given almost any task, a normal engineer is likely to go into needless detail that laymen just aren't interested in. A smart engineer is one that doesn't really think like an engineer at all, gives people what they want and take the money.

If it's about engineers, it's still outrageously shitty. What a twist. Seriously, a fucking joke about scientists being pedantic and socially awkward? I'm pretty sure Lord High Randollious Munroguvich III was making these comics about Sir Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century.

And the third panel is really the only part of the comic that's about engineers. The first two panels don't even have engineers, they just have a shitty paraphrase of an awesome movie. The fourth panel claims to be about smart engineers, but honestly practically anyone could have come up with that scheme, and besides the real humor is "Haha wow Nigel Tufnel what a dumbshit he TOTALLY would buy into such an obvious ruse." Okay, sure, it's a bit relative--is the joke "Haha, that engineer is WAY SMARTER than Nigel Tufnel" or "Haha Nigel Tufnel is WAY DUMBER than that engineer"? Since the engineer doesn't seem particularly smart, and there's an entire movie about how dumb Nigel is, I'm more inclined to think that Randall is making the latter joke.

I for one have never watched Spinal Tap, though through Pop Culture Osmosis I know about the "goes to eleven" joke. Hell, even the BBC does it on their video player. When I read the comic, I felt rage for a reason I couldn't quite understand. I think you've pinpointed that reason Carl. Kudos. I am usually a fan of xkcd comics, but this one was just bad bad bad.

Person #1 is right on the money. "But I would take your review a bit further and say that it's just the exact same joke in the movie, except dressed up differently."

I've never seen Spinal Tap (I would love to), but it's obvious from watching the posted segment: at least half of the joke is that some engineer DID rip them off by putting 11s on there. Way to go, Randall, you are a provider of INGENIOUS insight.

Also, I'm not sure if I can believe Randall's assertion a "normal person" would suggest making 10 louder. The idea is too logical. I would imagine a "normal person" would have stopped asking questions after "one louder" except a request to hear the difference.

This site has definently got away from the amusing insight into why comics suck to the shouting nerdrage at every single thing, regardless of quality. This comic wasn't terribly hilarious but to be fair, neither was that clip. Like, at all. If you applied the same filter you do to XKCD to everything you wouldn't like -anything- funny, except maybe Dinosaur Comic.Oh well.

I dunno Adam, when I first watched This is Spinal Tap, I thought the whole "...but these go up to 11" was funny. But then again, maybe I was laughing at how dumb Nigel was and not how silly the situation was.

The problem is not that this comic is less funny than the source material (many good things are less funny than Spinal Tap), the problem is that this comic is only funny insofar as it reminds me of the source material. That which is original in this comic is the "point" about engineers, and at least in this incarnation, that joke has 0 humor value.

It's not the same joke as in the movie, it's just an incredibly bad joke.

I enjoyed the comic not because the comic had any redeeming value but because it reminded me of such a wonderful movie, and I sent the comic to a few friends and we all had a good laugh about how funny Spinal Tap was. But none of us really commented on the comic because the comic is just so forgettable after triggering memories of true comedy.

Dammit, Randal! It does have friggin' units! any electrical equipment has some kind of power usage rating, so if it goes from 1 to x and it's rated for power p, it'll be in units of x/p. Even a stupid engineer would know that.

Huh. I never got that from the movie. It seemed more to me like another one of their eccentricities (which whoever constructed the amplifier just bought into) than an off-screen engineer scamming them. It's not like he mentions a special price he had to pay to get speakers that go up to eleven.

Yeah, I saw this comic and just thought "wow this is masturbatory". You know that friend of yours who always tries to take credit for any band/movie/game/whatever he/she introduces you to, as if he/she created the work? This is what Randall is doing, and it is not funny.

"they" are Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, Michael McKeen, and Rob Reiner. You may not believe that I knew that without looking it up, but I did. They were on the Daily Show a few weeks ago; Christopher Guest made A Mighty Wind, Waiting for Guffman, and Best In Show, three well recieved movies, Harry Shearer does about a billion voices for the simpsons, he and Chris Guest were on SNL together....they are pretty famous people I would say.

I think the newest strip's joke is a really poorly executed spoof on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/25/tareq-and-michaele-salahi_n_371336.html when the two people who pretend to be on a reality TV show got into the White House dinner and took pictures with Vice President Biden and met President Obama.

Actually, it's much less obscure and more obvious that that. It's a spoof (I use the term loosely for the benefit of Randall) of Michael Moore and his first film Michael and Me (check the title of the script.) In the movie, Moore uses similar tactics to try and get an interview with the head of GM.

There's also a much subtler parody in play here as Moore and Munroe are both hacks who only put in the smallest amount of research to make their point, but usually get basic concepts wring, both are often falsely and intentionally identified with their target audience (Moore: The working class; Munroe: Scientists) and both attempt comedy and often fail.

Of course maybe I'm reading too much into that second version. Randall probably just wanted to say a dirty word.

And speaking of dirty words, I was reading through the Penny Arcade archives today, because I don't want to do the actual work i'm supposed to be doing, and stumbled upon this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/6/12/

Personally I think this is a much better use of the word vulva in a punchline. But what do I know, I'm just some hack on the internet.

Way Walker, I think you just showed how xkcd could be awesome, but I don't think Randall has the drive to take the time to make something so awesome. Even when he does make a comic that long, he fucks it up with using 1/10 of the panels to actually tell the story and the rest are useless making his effort futile

So I know that A) you don't care and B) you've gotten this before, but I really don't feel like I can rest easy without saying this to you, Oh wayward moron who has created this blog.

You seem to insist that you "get" the jokes, and maybe you UNDERSTAND the jokes, but you certainly do NOT get them. Often your criticism is baseless and mindless, often falling back on you saying "That's stupid!" which isn't even real criticism.

Furthermore, in the FAQ you say that you are allowed to judge XKCD even if you couldn't do better. This would be ok if you didn't perpetually TRY to do better. You always say things like "Oh, this is how it SHOULD be..."

Final grievance: you seem to complain a lot (and I mean a LOT) about the situations in the comic being contrived. Ok, awesome. I'm sure you also think that the situations in As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne are contrived too. The point is, it ISN'T REALITY. It isn't MEANT to be reality. It's meant to be a comic. So stop your complaining, for the love of God.

"Final grievance: you seem to complain a lot (and I mean a LOT) about the situations in the comic being contrived. Ok, awesome. I'm sure you also think that the situations in As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne are contrived too. The point is, it ISN'T REALITY. It isn't MEANT to be reality. It's meant to be a comic. So stop your complaining, for the love of God."

This is where you lose what tiny shred of credibility you had. You see, just because something is fictional (are those the only two fictional works you've read?) does not mean that it gets a free pass on plausibility.

There's an important distinction to be made between realism and verisimilitude. Realism is how close something is to reality. This is not something you really want to strive for in fiction, because reality is often boring. Verisimilitude, however, is that which is real-SEEMING. In fiction this often entails things which do not actually happen in the real world; the important thing is that, when reading them, you do not find yourself thinking "Well that's stupid and contrived."

Reality often lacks verisimilitude when it is transcribed into fiction--because they are different qualities. Realism is not important in fiction. Verisimilitude is.

Randall's comics lack verisimilitude, and this is a negative quality in any fiction.

Those were merely two classic works I could think of that involved some horribly contrived situations. The Scarlet Letter especially.

Anyway, back to the comic, take some of the criticism of comic 669, the one with the frictionless vacuum and the physicist. The blog complains that you have to "suspend a crazy amount of disbelief." The fact is, anything that is fictional makes you do that to an extent. Why complain about it here? Do people complain that Monty Python and the Holy Grail makes you suspend disbelief? (Well, people probably do but they shouldn't). The simple fact is, the comic is meant to be satirical (in this case of the contrived situations of science classrooms) and therefore the fact that the situation is contrived shouldn't freaking matter.

No, I'm still pretty FUCKING PISSED OFF KEYBOARD-POUNDING ENRAGED that you're a retard.

Anyway do you have an example of Carl not getting the joke? Because you say we don't, but without substantiation, I don't think your post is even real criticism. What is real criticism, anyway? Do you mean professional criticism? This obviously isn't professional, Carl isn't getting paid. Or is this an obnoxious incarnation of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, where "real" criticism is "criticism that I agree with"?

In your bringing up Monty Python, do you remember the Monty Python xkcd? Randall said that he was tired of people just showing something awesome and then everyone laughing at it.

There's a little something called irony there because if you look at most of Randall's recent work he is just taking reference from something great and putting a slight mathematical, scientific spin on it to make it his (examples not limited to his plethora of comics mentioning Firefly, the TLtWatW one, the Terminator one, his This is Spinal Tap garbage). Now for someone who said he's tired of people doing that, why the hell is he doing it now?

Forget our suspension of disbelief, we're just sick and tired of Randall phoning in his comics 3 times a week and him still making a career out of it

I don't think he needed to make the comic that long. My first thought was just to make it shorter. In addition to the joke itself, there's also humor in contrasting:

- the importance of the situation with that of the joke, but I think the camera and the desk in the last panel are enough for this

- the urgency of the situation with the joke, which I think is improved by cutting it down but lost in the single panel version

- the length of the build up with the joke, where I don't think three panels are enough

Also, the call for security hurt the joke more than usual. Usually, the dialog after the punchline just keeps us from moving forward, but here it draws us back.

But, I need to admit, I think the joke was good as it was. These points didn't ruin the joke and not every comic needs to be a magnum opus. It did make me smile. If anything ruined the joke, it was that xkcd keeps milking an assumed awkwardness about women's naughty bits, but that's not a problem with this comic in itself.

Also, after uploading, I noticed two mistakes: Beret isn't in the "Borders" panel and the "shing" of the swords is backwards. Also, I probably should've added the beret to the first row.

I think it's hilarious that whenever one of you guys can't respond to something, or simply don't feel like defending your point, your default argument is "you didn't get what I was trying to say," yet when people say the same thing about your "criticisms" of xkcd, you're all like "no, I got it, it's just stupid and I'm a genius."

I had a whole long retort written out to you, femalethoth, but at this point I'm tired of arguing. Anything I say will not sway you and vice versa because we are both so firm in our convictions. So why bother trying? I will continue to think you (and the creator of this site) are morons, and you can go on thinking I am a moron. Everyone wins.

I like the scare quotes around criticisms! It is exactly like you are a complete fucktard.

I'm not sure what your issue is. Jeremy clearly did not so much as comprehend my point--he did nothing but reiterate what he said earlier, using Monty Python instead of the only two books he's ever read as an example. In no way does he come close to touching on the nuance between verisimilitude and realism. Instead he insists that when we complain about the difficulty of suspending disbelief for the comic that it is the same as complaining that you have to suspend disbelief for anything at all, ever. This is identical to his original point.

When people accuse us of not understanding the joke, they do so because they think that if you understand it you would find it funny. Usually it goes something like this: "the joke is about how physics professors give problems that take place in frictionless vacuums, maybe you should take a basic physics class."

Why yes, it is! I have always been cognizant of this fact, because it is PATENTLY OBVIOUS and even people who have no math or science background whatsoever can recognize what Randall is making jokes about.

The issue is not people saying "you don't understand." That's perfectly valid--but only if someone actually doesn't understand. By and large any time one of the cuddlefish says it on here, it is because they think it is funny and we do not. There is no actual substance to their accusations.

Hell, I can think of plenty. Not because he's not in the target audience, which he obviously is, but sometimes just because he doesn't get it. Jeremy's first two points had more validity than 90% of what the fans bring up. He spoiled it by being a dipshit and failing to understand suspension of disbelief in fiction, so I think this might be a case of the stopped clock being right twice a day.

Way Walker's epic edit was enough to push me over the edge. I have been converted. Not in the sense that I realize that xkcd is no longer good, because I would have figured that out on my own, but in the sense that this place amuses me enough to stick around. Curses.

The funny thing about people pointing out things like "therapist"/ "the rapist," "canal"/"see anal," "mormon"/"moron," etc. is they tend to act like they're the first person to ever notice those things, or that it's uncommon for people to make those associations.

If Susanna Kaysen's sociopathic/schizoid hospital mate was able to figure it out in 1969, it might not be as enlightening or amusing as you think.

I don't think I'm a wholly original individual, but the blog is intended for people who care what I have to say, not you, aloria. Regardless of that, thank you for your criticism. I'd love to know what you have to say about other posts of mine.

Fair 'nuff. It isn't aimed at you guys and you are entitled not to like it. I don't think I'm the most clever person in the world or anything, but people who enjoy my blog enjoy it. And those who don't are allowed to not enjoy it.

see you make the funny mistake of assuming that just because I don't have friends who don't have lives and spend their time leaving comments on blogs, I don't have friends period. Do you really think I'd go to the trouble of posting repeatedly if no one was looking at it? What a cunt you are.

I know I should give up, but in my upbringing it has been ground into my brain to be as stubborn as possible. It achieves nothing but at least the people you're fighting against don't just immediately think they've won. You all have my lawyer mother to thank for this bullshit.

A very wise man gave me some advice one time. I am going to impart it to you:

You gotta know when to hold 'em,know when to fold 'em,know when to walk away,know when to run.You never count your moneywhen you're sittin' at the tablethere'll be time enough for countin'when the dealin's done.

actually, who cares, everything after that was right and Jeremy some more advice from someone who loves to have the last word in any argument. There is always going to be a time when you will continue to talk long after the argument has been won by your opponents, continuing to talk and argue will not change that.

it's not "the characters in spinal tap were stupid and could be tricked," it's "people are stupid and can be tricked -- tricked in specific ways by smart, opportunistic people (who are awesome)."

this is not a spinal tap joke, it's an engineer joke making an amusing passing reference to spinal tap. being offended on the film's behalf is like being offended by Spinal Tap on behalf of Queen, et al. you're missing the point.

I comment only to +1 to the acclamation of Waywalker's epic edit. That is truly awesome.

Now I think about it, it's a pity Randall doesn't do many strips that long and epic himself. He's not brilliant at making short, snappy strips, and making long and epic strips is easier for him than for most cartoonists because he's just doing stick figures.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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